The character is Michonne, a badass from the original Walking Dead comic. The Talking Dead revealed earlier this year that she will be played by Danai Gurira (Treme, The Visitor); further, Walking Dead showrunner Glen Mazzarra stated at the time that “We know that she’s a loner, we know she kicks ass. But we have some other traits about her that are not in the comic book that we’ll deviate.”

Today, Entertainment Weekly dropped a few more nuggets about the mysterious Michonne, with comic book creator and executive producer of the TV show Robert Kirkman elaborating on Mazzarra’s statement:

“The essence of the character — her personality, her motives, everything that makes Michonne Michonne — remains intact from the comics…But like a lot of things on the show, there will be little tweaks and differences here and there. We saw that her introduction is slightly different from how it was in the comic, and her interaction with Andrea is really going to be a really cool addition to the character that I think will get television viewers up to speed, and they’ll get to know her a lot faster than comic book readers did.”

As for Gurira’s casting, Kirkman stated the search brought them a lot of “really fantastic” actresses, but Gurira was the one who had “that one spar, that moment where everyone was completely in agreement and completely excited, and we felt like we had found the essence of this fictional character that just randomly appeared in another person, and that person was Danai Gurira.”

He went on to say that Season Three’s setting—a prison—looks “absolutely amazing… They are shooting the hell out of this prison. It just looks absolutely stunning, and I think when people start seeing trailers and stuff for this season, I think people are just gonna be like, “Wait, what? This is what? I can’t believe this is a TV show!”